Inside our podcast production agency, one of my big pushes over the last couple years was to convert to Scrum-style project management so that we could be working on 2-3 service improvement projects at any given time.

So I wanted to give you a glimpse into that system and the projects we’ve run this year to improve our podcast service. If you’re a current client you’ll recognize some or all of these projects (not all applies to every client) and if you’re looking to launch a podcast this gives you insight into what it takes to keep up in the world of podcasting.

Here are the bigger service improvement projects we’ve run just in 2021.

Headline and subject line optimization

We started using a headline optimizer first (we use this one) and then added the email subject line optimizer later.

The goal was to raise the quality of our average episode title, and this site helped us gamify the process by scoring each title.

Not only did we find ourselves writing better episode titles, but we also shared and celebrated when we wrote high-scoring titles.

Milestone Episode Notifications 

Milestone episodes are your 50th, 100th episode, or hitting a milestone in download numbers like 100,000. 

Watching for milestone episodes has helped us to get clients thinking early about special episodes, new ideas or ways to get more promotional juice out of that milestone.

That led to special strategy calls, creative episode ideas, and even me guest hosting on Lars Hedenborg’s 450th episode. 

Client Update Email improvements 

We wanted to make the email more useful for gauging audience growth and decision making on topics.

So we added a new Weekly Stats Graph that’s more readable and actionable than other graphs (in my opinion) and gives a better sense of where audience growth is going.

We also changed up one of the stats included in our email to include top episodes of the last 90 days, rather than all-time. That gives you a better sense of what the best topics are and removes the all-time episodes which change less frequently.

Leveraging opportunities to put clients on podcasts we produce

For clients in real estate that meant looking for ways to put them on Real Estate Uncensored. So it’s now part of our weekly meeting to ask the question, “What client should be putting on other shows we produce?”

We also added certain clients into our BusDev system to specifically look for ways to introduce them to podcasters we connect with.

Since we don’t offer podcast booking as part of our service (with good reason), this gives us a way to systematically get our clients more exposure. I always want to look beyond having good intentions, and build things into our systems to solve problems once and for all. Weekly questions are a good way to ensure that things stay on your radar.

Highlight Clips going out the same day as an episode release 

We used to have Highlight Clips go out the following week to point back to the episode and drive new traffic to it. Nothing wrong with that, but as our production process got even better and we got raw episodes from clients further in advance, we were able to move this up. 

This one is a little subjective, as I can see a case for Highlight Clips going out at various times, but all the feedback we got from clients on this change was...